Like father like son. Rod Roddenberry, the son of late Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, will join CBS’s forthcoming Trek show as an executive producer.
The production team on the latest TV incarnation of Star Trek continues to grow, and the news for longtime fans of the property keeps getting better and better. First, it was announced that Bryan Fuller (Hannibal and Pushing Daises) would be the new series showrunner. If that wasn’t good enough, the writer/director of the films Star Trek II and VI, Nicholas Meyer, was also recently announced as being a producer and writer on the show. Rod Roddenberry’s contribution is the cherry on top.
Aside from just being the child of Trek royalty–his mother Majel Barrett played Nurse Chapel on the original series, and Deanna Troi’s mother on The Next Generation–Rod Roddenberry has spent the last several years protecting his father’s legacy, and produced the 2011 documentary Trek Nation. He also served as a consulting producer on the fan-produced Star Trek: New Voyages series released online between 2003 and 2011. He’s joined on the new Star Trek series by Trevor Roth, COO of Roddenberry Entertainment.
In a statement to the Hollywood Reporter, Fuller said “Gene Roddenberry, the Great Bird of the Galaxy, left a finely feathered nest for all who love Star Trek to enjoy. It is only fitting that Rod Roddenberry and Roddenberry Entertainment join our new Trek adventure to ensure that his father’s legacy of hope for the future and infinite diversity in infinite combinations runs through our tales as Gene Roddenberry intended.”
Rod Roddenberry also made a statement: “While I will always be humbled by its legacy and the legions of fans who are its guardians, it’s a genuine honor to be joining a team of imaginative and incredibly capable individuals whose endeavor it is to uphold the tenets of Star Trek’s legacy while bringing it to audiences in a new era and on a contemporary platform.”
The “contemporary platform” he speaks of is the fact that the new Trek show will skip airing on broadcast television (aside from the premiere episode) and go straight to CBS’ digital streaming platform, CBS All Access. Many fans said they wouldn’t pay the price of a new streaming service just for one new series when it was announced, but the addition of so many creative people who are important to Star Trek fans might change some minds. The new Star Trek is set to debut in a little less than a year, in January of 2017.
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IMAGE: CBSÂ
